CHAPTER NINE
Dorothy Louise Walcott stirred. In the momentary liminality between dreaming and waking, she was safe and she was home, and then she remembered.
Her eyes opened. She lay in a small bed, in a small room.
A forlorn window at one end illuminated the dust upon the domestic paraphernalia: desk, bureau, candlesticks, curtains.
The junk on the shelves opposite – a shattered globe, two brass scales, a fleet of dip pens – was stacked haphazardly up a cracked wall.
The room had the musty smell of abandon.
Dot heard the revving of motor cars and the babble of pedestrian conversation beyond the window’s thin glass.
A bitter wind seeped in. She shivered and found that she was only in her chemise.
The sight of the cream cotton – old, stained, so intimately hers, exposing her thighs and bare arms to the alien space – made her start.
Who had undressed her? Where was her carpet bag?
Dot strained against her fatigue. With a great deal of effort, she lifted her arm so that she could rub her eyes, and felt the deep sting of an injury in her shoulder.
That was when she awoke truly and saw her hand.
Confused at first, she did not scream; she did not recoil nor vomit nor descend into the kind of shock one would assume appropriate. She could only stare.
The left hand that had once belonged to her – short fingers, peeling skin, chewed nails – had transformed.
Where flesh had once been, smooth scales now shimmered.
Talons, long and black like tar, protruded from her fingers.
A strange line of plates spiked from her middle finger down the back of her hand.
The growth halted at her wrist as if she wore a strange, silk glove.
It made the hand look long and perversely elegant.
Dot twisted it this way and that, her mouth a little open as she stared.
In the murky morning light, she saw flecks of purple and blue in the dark scales.
There was something wet to it. Ichthyic. She thought of the anglerfish.
Dot reached for it with her other hand and when her human skin met the cold, slimy scales of her left hand, she began to scream.
The sound shook the very walls of the house.
Theodora flew into the room to find Dot howling, tearing at the scales with her bitten fingernails. She ripped and scratched until she drew blood.
‘Get it off me!’
In two wide steps, the witch crossed to the bed. She yanked Dot’s hand away. The girl made to fight her, but Theodora touched one finger to Dot’s temple, and she collapsed back into bed.
When Dot’s eyes opened again, they landed on a creature sitting across from her. He was in a chintz armchair that had not been there earlier, reading a romance novel. He noticed her gaze and promptly closed the book.
‘Hello,’ said the spirit in his gentle, melodic voice. ‘My name is Belchamber.’
He was shaped and textured like his namesake: the kind of wide, old bell found in church towers.
He had thin arms and legs and thick eyebrows that were creased now in concern.
A distant part of Dot registered that there was something special to this – a spirit speaking with her – but she did not care.
With considerable effort, Dot turned her back to him. Her tears were quiet.
‘I will be here,’ said Belchamber, and she heard him pick up his book.
Theodora came into the room every few hours to deliver food or smear salve onto Dot’s wrist and shoulder.
Once or twice, the witch touched her fingers to Dot’s forehead, murmuring about tests.
Dot pretended to sleep each time. The strange scaly growth upon her left hand was, now, tightly bandaged. Even so, she would not look at it.
Dot did not bathe. She would not talk. Her carpet bag, which had been fished from the river, sat beside her and once Belchamber had seen Dot straining for her tonic, he plucked all the phials out and placed them on her bedside table.
Every now and then, with immense difficulty, she propped herself up and took a sip.
The spirit helped her to the lavatory across the hall – without him, she would have crawled, the same as she had done when she was fourteen and her illness had been new.
She had been so fatigued she could not walk, nor read, nor go to school.
That was when Archie had started trialling strange tinctures and tonics on her, desperate to aid her.
It had taken him months, but the ambergris, found quite coincidentally on an expedition to the South Sea, combined with an old Eyreish brew, had together created a tonic that had finally helped.
But this, thought Dot, is worse.
It felt as if a sea fog enveloped her – cold, opaque, with the roar of something terrifying just beyond.
For hours, all she could do was listen to the house.
The ceiling creaked above as if a set of heavy feet were periodically pacing.
Voices filtered through the wallpaper: a boy’s, a young man’s.
She knew not the days of the week. She yearned to telegram Archie and beg him to bring her home, but then she would think of the growth upon her hand that felt cold and wet beneath the bandages.
How could she return to Seafarthing like this?
Days passed. Outside the thin window, the cicadas started to chirp.
Children played in the street. The house creaked.
Dot watched the sun set beyond the window.
The neighbours’ lamps switched on, one by one, the sight softened slightly by the gentle patter of rain against the glass.
At last, a knock came. As Dot’s eyes shut, Theodora stepped in and said, ‘I know you’re not asleep. ’
Dot heard the witch cross to the window and wrench it open, heard the patter of rain falling upon the floorboards.
‘Belchamber,’ said Theodora to the spirit. ‘Lio’s in the courtyard again. Can you stop him before he kills all the hydrangeas?’
‘Of course, mistress.’
When he was gone, she heard Theodora settle in the armchair. At last, Dot looked at her.
‘You smell awful,’ said the witch.
Dot said nothing.
‘And you’re in my house again.’
Dot winced and the witch waited.
‘I haven’t any money,’ said Dot, ‘I cannot reimburse you.’
‘You think I want compensation?’ Theodora scoffed. ‘That thing on your hand. Do you know what it is?’
‘No.’
‘Do you care to know?’
Dot shrugged, grimacing at a shot of pain in her shoulder.
‘I suppose I’ll tell you anyway,’ said Theodora. ‘Once, it would have been called a curse. Instead, we shall say it’s an affliction.’
‘Was it the woman with the jars?’ asked Dot.
‘Was what her?’
‘Did she do this to me?’
‘Heavens no,’ said Theodora. ‘Moira is a collector. She couldn’t create something to save her life.’
‘The other one, then,’ said Dot. ‘With the red string.’
‘Cate. She might be their leader, but this magic is stronger than anything she could have done to you, Dorothy.’
Those big, dark eyes – sparkling as if enamoured with this mystery – now swept over Dot. It felt like sandpaper against her skin. At once, Dot became keenly aware of the oil on her face, the stink of the river in her hair, and the shame of her itchy, unbathed body.
‘It’s Dot.’
‘Pardon?’
‘My name.’
‘Lio told Belchamber it was Dorothy.’
‘Just Dot.’
‘Who in Saints’ name gave you a pet name like that?’
‘My brother,’ said Dot.
‘Sounds like an affirming chap,’ said Theodora. ‘Does he also pretend to be asleep to avoid tricky conversations?’
Dot did not answer.
‘If I summoned him,’ asked the witch, kindly, ‘would it help you?’
‘No,’ said Dot. ‘Please don’t. Not Willard.’
‘Do you have someone else, then, who might give you some comfort? Your mother?’
Dot grimaced. ‘She’s not the comforting type, nor is my father, and I have a grandad, but he’s soon to take a trip to the Southern Archipelago, and I don’t want to ruin it. Please, don’t telephone anyone.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Theodora. ‘We do not have a telephone.’
The witch leaned back in the armchair, one pointed black boot resting on her opposite knee. Eventually, Dot realised the witch would not leave without at least a little progress.
‘What do you mean “affliction”?’ asked Dot.
‘I will tell you,’ said Theodora, getting up. She lifted a hand as if to catch something, a paper aeroplane or a shuttlecock, and a blue towel appeared in her grasp. She dropped it into Dot’s lap. ‘After you take a bath.’
Dot sat on a couch in a borrowed nightdress.
She had bathed herself one-handed and now felt raw.
Her heavy hair dripped against her elbows and back, and her damp feet had become dusty from padding down the stairs and into the living room.
Her knees were clutched to her chest now as she watched the flames that had been lit for her.
In the next room, Theodora clanged pots and hummed along to the scratchy tune of the wireless.
Dot had imagined a thousand Theodoras. Young, old, haggard, enchanting, every kind of faerie queen or vile sorceress that her mind could conjure.
None of them had come close to the truth of her.
Not the lilac scent of her clothes nor the fidgety way she spoke with her hands nor the staccato click of her boots against the floorboards.
Dot peered around the living room. There was an abandoned quality here: dead hyacinths on the mantel, soot stains on the carpet, thick grime upon the windowpanes.
Yet beneath and betwixt the neglect were hints of opulence.
Scattered on the tables were tea pots and leather-bound volumes of The Ancient Histories of Pruisia.
Oil paintings in gilded frames were stacked against the wall.
In the corner was a black, ornate vase holding a bundle of bergamot branches and, beside it, a statue of a wide-bodied maiden strumming a lute.
Someone had placed a vest over her and given her a set of spectacles.